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The SFHA submitted its response to the Scottish Government’s consultation on the Social Housing Charter at the end of August. Following feedback received from members, the SFHA has asked that no sweeping changes be made to the Charter at this time. That said, SFHA did ask for a number of minor amendments in order to make the Charter more user friendly and up to date with relevant legislation.

The Charter provides a useful method for tenants and landlords to evaluate and compare performance. However, since the Charter’s inception, each RSL in Scotland has to date submitted just three Annual Returns on the Charter (ARC) to the Scottish Housing Regulator – meaning that only now are we beginning to see the possibility of meaningful benchmarking and comparisons year on year based on this data. To radically alter the charter so early into its existence would not be giving it adequate time to yield demonstrable results. The Charter is still young, and needs to be in place for a longer period of time before its overall impact can be meaningfully assessed.

Although it is expected that no radical changes will be made, the SFHA has asked that the Scottish Government provide a further opportunity for stakeholders to comment once it has drafted any revisions to the Charter, prior to its submission to Scottish Parliament.

It is also worth highlighting, that the SFHA will feed into any subsequent review of the Scottish Housing Regulator’s Charter indicators, that will follow the conclusion of the Charter review early next year.

The full SFHA response is available in the downloads section to the right of this article.